May 30 (GMM) With the future of the event currently in doubt, Toto Wolff has aimed fire at Monaco’s historic Formula 1 street circuit layout.
The Mercedes boss hit out at the fact that Fernando Alonso was able to deliberately drive 5 seconds too slow – at ‘Formula 2 pace’ – in order to keep Lewis Hamilton behind.
“It is a lesson to be learned so that guys can’t drive five seconds off the pace in a motorcade,” Wolff said.
“It’s a fantastic venue, but it would be great if all races could be of the same standard.”
Alpine driver Alonso admitted that keeping Hamilton’s Mercedes behind despite driving so slowly was not at all difficult.
“We knew graining would be a problem so I saved the tyres. This is Monaco and I love keeping other drivers behind,” the Spaniard smiled to AS newspaper.
Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, meanwhile, saved his criticism for Formula 1’s new race management who delayed the start of Sunday’s race amid heavy rain.
Wolff thinks the delay was because of a power failure, while Magnussen told the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet: “They must have had their reasons.
“But we’re professional drivers. It’s Formula 1, not WEC.”
When asked about F1’s new race directors, after Michael Masi was ousted over the 2021 Abu Dhabi saga, Magnussen said: “They are new so there is a lot of pressure on them.
“I don’t want to be in their shoes and have to make those decisions, but I would put money on it that all 20 drivers would have started the race. We are professionals and we’ve all done it before.
“Yes, these are the most tricky conditions you can drive in, but I enjoyed it. Monaco in wet weather – it does not get more exciting,” the Dane added.
Finally, quadruple world champion Sebastian Vettel had nothing nice to say about official F1 supplier Pirelli’s full-wet rain tyre.
“They are way too hard for this track but it was the same in Imola too. It’s just a bad tyre,” said the German.
He thinks it’s the Pirelli tyres that caused Sunday’s wet weather delay.
“I can remember days when we could have driven here, but with these tyres it’s impossible,” Vettel said.
“They look nice, but actually they’re useless. As soon as you can go onto the intermediate, you do it straight away.”